This means that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for the purpose of reclaiming such fugitives and I admit that slaves were intended-as are lawfully claimed in any one of the original States. The very fact of the proviso implies that Congress understood that the right of reclamation could not exist, unless it was excepted.

And of course it could only exist for the purpose excepted. The intention was to grant the right to the original States, but to limit it to them. It is impossible to conceive of a measure for framing the proviso as it is, if that had not been the intention. As the ordinance itself made provision for the formation of new States, such States must have been in the minds of members when acting upon it. If the object had been to authorize the reclamation of slaves escaping to this territory from other States than original States, it is certain the word "original" would have been omitted. It was intended for the purpose of limiting the right.

Now observe that this article, proviso and all, is part of an unalterable compact to which the Constitution has given validity. Nobody pretends Congress has ever had the power to alter it. Mr. TоOMBS denies any such power in express terms. A law which Congress cannot alter has substantially the force and effect of a constitutional proviso. This, then, is the only law for the reclamation of fugitive slaves in the five States of the northwest territory; and there can be no other, the Constitution having made it perpetually valid.

Such obviously is the meaning and legal effect of the fugitive slave provision in the ordinance. And the meaning of that, derived as it is not merely from the consent of the Federal and State conventions, but from their concurrent action, necessarily fixes the meaning of the provision on the same subject in the Constitution, and shows how it must have been understood. As the two were parts of the same compromise, of course neither was understood to be inconsistent with the other. The provision in the Constitution is in these words:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

So far as this describes, or was understood to describe, persons held to service or labor as slaves, it necessarily must also have been understood to apply only to the original States. This follows from what has already been shown. And it must have been so understood for another reason, because it was only "in" and "under" the laws of those States that persons could be held to service or labor as slaves. Under the laws of the Territories and new States, their being so held was forever prohibited. Hence, none but those escaped from one of the original States could ever be legally liable to reclamation, according to the understanding and intention of the original parties to this compact. This manifestly was the meaning of "the fathers,” when the ordinance and Constitution were framed and ratified.

The two provisions must be construed together. That in the ordinance was intended for the Territories and new States, and that in the Constitution for the original States. If that in the Constitution had been intended for the Territories, it would have read, "escaping into another State or into the Territory," and that in the ordinance would have been entirely omitted. The proviso to the prohibition in the Missouri Compromise in 1820 is a striking confirmation of this. That was copied, word for word, from the ordinance of 1787, or original compromise, except substituting for the words "in any one of the States," the words "in any State or Territory of the United States," as follows:

"Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive," &c. And in the compromise of 1820:

"Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such fugitive," &c.

Why say "in any State or Territory of the United States," instead of "in any one of the original States," as in the ordinance of 1787, unless the Congress of 1820 understood the latter to limit the right of recovering fugitive slaves to the original States, and meant by the Missouri bill to extend it to all the States and Territories? They did extend it, but in palpable violation of the "spirit of the compact of the fathers," and of the "policy of 1787."

Originally the Southern States committed themselves to the policy of slavery restriction, by a compact in the nature of a contract for a consideration. By their own votes, they relinquished all pretence of right to any slaves beyond the jurisdiction of the original States. Slaveholders, as such, voluntarily shut themselves out of the new States, in consideration of the right of recovering their fugitive slaves in whatever part of America they might take refuge. The object, as I have clearly shown, was to secure to slavery in the original States the right of recovering fugitives, whether their escape should be from one of those States to another, or to the Territories and new States; but to make that the limit, both of the right of recovery on one side, and of the obligation to permit or allow it, on the other. It follows, then :

First: That as between the new States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, no right of reclamation exists, or can exist, there being no power in Congress, as the South admit, to alter the compact in the ordinance of 1787, which denies this right.

Second: That no person, escaping from those States into any other State or Territory, can be reclaimed as a fugitive slave, because no person can be held as a slave under their laws.

Third: That no slave escaping from the slave States of Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, or Florida, into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, or Missouri, can be lawfully reclaimed as a fugitive slave, because Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida are not original States.

Fourth: If slaves escape from any State or Territory other than the original States, into the States of the northwestern territory, no lawful power can touch them. The moment they reach those States they become free, because labor or service cannot lawfully be claimed of them in an original State.

Fifth: After the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slaves escaping from Arkansas and Missouri, for example to Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, could be reclaimed, but escaping to Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, they could not be. And the Congress of 1820 so understood it. The particular in which the Missouri proviso was altered in copying from the ordinance of 1787, is proof enough of this.

But did the framers of the Government intend to distinguish in this manner between new and original slave States? Certainly not; and the reason is, they did not mean to have any new slave States. Otherwise they certainly did mean to make this distinction, for nothing can be clearer than that Louisiana and Missouri cannot go to Ohio to recover fugitive slaves within the meaning of this "compact of the fathers;" while Georgia can. Manifestly we have departed from the system devised by the fathers in allowing Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida to be admitted with slavery, which explains, and nothing else can, this anomalous condition of things.

There can be no escape from these conclusions, but to deny that the ordinance has ever had any validity under the Constitution; which would be scarcely less than to deny that the Constitution itself had ever been a valid instrument. Having the like unequivocal sanction of national authority, and expressing alike in the words of Mr. Toombs, "the collective will of the whole," they must stand or fall together.

Originally the territory was not divided by the line of 36° 30', or by any other line giving part to freedom and part to slavery. It was all secured, and by consent of the South, to freedom. There is nothing, therefore, in the original compromise, to justify the remark of the Editor of the Boston Courier in a recent number of that paper, that "below the line of 36° 30', the South have the right of prescription." Freedom has an older prescriptive right to all the Territories. The line established by the compromise, between slavery permitted and slavery prohibited, was the boundary line between the then existing States and the Territory of the United States; or the line between exclusive national jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the States. It is an erroneous assumption, therefore, that the free States, by the introduction of slavery south of 36° 30', as well as north of it, would receive more than a fair share or moiety of rights and privileges, as between States or parties entitled to equal privileges. The idea that the extension of slavery under the Federal Government can be claimed by anybody south or north as a right, is wholly inadmissible. The Courier will hold the following declarations from Mr. WEBSTER to be good authority, if others do not:

"Wherever there is a foot of land to be staid back from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of excluding slavery." "We are to use the first and last, and every occasion which offers, to oppose the extension of slave power."

"I have to say, that while I hold with as much integrity, I trust, and faithfulness, as any citizen of this country, to all the original amendments and compromises in which the Constitution under which we now live was adopted, I never could, and never can persuade myself to be in favor of the admission of other States into this Union as slave States with the inequalities which were allowed and accorded to the slaveholding States then in existence by the Constitution. I do not think that the free States ever expected, or could expect, that they would be called upon to admit further slave States. * * * I think they have the clearest right to require that the State coming into the Union, shall come in upon an equality; and if the existence of slavery be an impediment to coming in on an equality, then the State proposing to come in should be required to remove that inequality by abolishing slavery or take the alternative of being excluded. I put my opposition on the political ground that it deranges the balance of the Constitution."

Wherever there is a foot of land to be staid back from slavery! Every occasion to be used to oppose the extension of the slave power! New States to abolish the inequality of slavery, or be excluded! I suppose Northern conservatives of the class referred to have endorsed those doctrines and declarations of Mr. WEBSTER a thousand times, as sound, national, conservative, and constitutional. But no Republican, so far as I know, has ever proposed to go an inch beyond the line of policy they indicated. The Chicago, or Republican Platform, certainly does not. And yet that same line of policy, when advocated by Republicans, is denounced as unsound, sectional, radical, and unconstitutional.

We have a great deal said about the equality of the States; of the new with the original States. This is said to be a fundamental doctrine of the Constitution.

It is claimed that citizens of the slaveholding States have an equal right in the Territories with the citizens of the non-slaveholding States; and I admit they have. But it is also claimed that they have the same right to the protection of property in slaves as property in cotton. This I deny. There is no such doctrine of State equality in the Constitution, nor was any thing like it contemplated by its framers. On the contrary, the Constitution denied this doctrine by clear implication, certainly for the